In Toni Reavis' dreams, he hears his own voice, saying something like this: So, that's the story from Falmouth: With two races left in the season, the ZAP Zephyrs take the lead, led by Joe Driscoll's eighth place finish, but sealed with Morgan's amazing closing surge to pass Mammoth's Bauhs and push the team past McMillan's Mountaineers. Who would have thought at this point in the season Mammoth might not be in contention for the championship, but they could still close the gap with inspired running at Crim next week, and it all comes down to the final at New Haven on Labor Day. On the women's side, it's Hansons maintaining their commanding lead, with Rhode Island chipping away, but do they have time...

The dream of a coordinated running "tour" isn't exclusive to Reavis, but his is one of the loudest voices calling for it. Reavis' argument is that only by teaming up can running events present the necessary narrative, heroes, continuity and dollars to attract a fan following outside the narrow group of running groupies it does now. His argument is compelling, reasonable, natural even ... and mostly pie-in-the-sky, with the approaches tried so far. Perhaps the time has come for a fresh look and a new approach to making this dream come true.

INTEGRATED CIRCUITRY

Phil Stewart, director of the Cherry Blossom 10-miler and president of the Road Race Management organization says, "For the past 25 years I've sat around a lot of tables with a lot of talented people discussing, 'How can we make this happen?' and it hasn't happened yet." The difficulty, according to Stewart, stems from the fact that the sport evolved from the ground up, while a series is top down. Every race, no matter how big, started with someone from a local club drawing a starting line, a finish line, inviting anyone who wanted to run and firing a gun. Road racing on a more professional level was born, in part, as a protest to a top-down Amateur Athletics Union who dictated who could run and who could get money. Athletes took their talent to the open streets, and, in 1981, many of America's top athletes openly became professionals.

According to former elite and current Bloomsday Run director Don Kardong, the idea of a professional road racing league evolved out of the association athletes formed to fight the AAU, the Association of Road Racing Athletes (ARRA). "The concept was to emulate golf at the time," Kardong recalls, "and have a circuit owned by the athletes. We successfully pulled together some of the top road races in the country." The athletes' goal, however, was primarily to get open prize money, and that goal accomplished, they lost steam on the circuit idea, leaving it to race directors.

In 1995, a group of race directors created the Professional Road Running Organization (PRRO) Circuit, a fall/spring series of top races culminating in a big championship race, which would shift among members. Athletes needed to run enough races in the series to qualify them to run in the championship, which had a total prize purse of $100,000, $25,000 of that reserved for the top male and female winner.

The first pro world championships road race occurred at Bloomsday in May 1996. Lazarus Nyakeraka and Colleen De Reuck took home the $25,000 -- both could accurately be called the top road racers of the year. But the championship, and the series, lacked the prestige and attention the race directors desired. Even in RT, while Bloomsday merited the top story in our "At the Races" section, the headline read, "More than 56,000 Celebrate the 20th," rather like the headline for the Super Bowl reading, "72,000 Watch the Superdome's 100th Game."

"Looking back," Kardong recalls, "the reality was, it was just really difficult for our sport to be like golf or tennis, where you can play basically every weekend -- that just doesn't work very well for our sport. There were athletes who qualified to go to the championships, but a lot of athletes we wished would have been there, didn't qualify. It was tough to get enough athletes to the championship race."

From the athletes' side, agent (and former athlete) Tom Ratcliffe of KIMbia Athletics sums up one of the problems: "For top runners, the ultimate goal is an Olympic medal. Running road races in the United States is kind of a distraction to that." Track still rules as the top echelon of our sport, both because the international competitions (Olympics, world championships) are competed there, and also because the track is where you can run the fastest. "People are focused on running fast," says agent Dan Lilot of Peter Stubbs Management, who represents runners such as Kara Goucher, Amy Begley and Dathan Ritzenhein. "Even the average runner asks, 'What's your 5K time, your 10K time?' People are judged by how fast they can run."

Even if primarily a road racer, in the current structure of running each athlete has his or her own season, defined by individualistic goals and financed by individual prize winnings and contracts with shoe companies and races. "It would be really difficult to attract top athletes to any kind of circuit, or road racing series," says Lilot. "It conflicts too much with things that are a higher priority -- a runner is going to ask, 'Is that going to fit into my season?'" The concept of signing over one's schedule to a team, league or season, as athletes do in most other sports, is a big leap.

Kardong, who still directs a smaller, less ambitious consortium of races under the PRRO umbrella since the full circuit fell apart after two years, says, regarding the larger goals, "There's still a shot at it. We always say, 'If you had a million dollars, you could kind of create the circuit the way you want.'"
SOLO TOUR

But could you? Talk to a few race directors and you quickly learn the scope of this challenge. Everyone points out that each race already has its own sponsors, and it's nigh but impossible to come up with a category that doesn't compete with one of them: shoe company, financial institution, health care, auto. Not to mention that each race has its own infrastructure, own goals, own local media contacts. None are keen on another coming in and telling them how to run things, and no one is in charge of any broader scope.

Jim Estes, associate director of marketing and long-distance running programs at USATF, feels that this role should fall on the shoulders of USATF. "By virtue of the fact that we're the national governing body, people do have some expectation that we're the ones that should be bringing some sense and order to the whole thing," Estes says. He recognizes, however, that taking such a role is problematic, given the history of running. "I equate it with a dad walking out the door when a kid is 5 years old, and then, he's 23 years old, out of college signing a professional football contract, and the dad walks in and says, 'I'm home!'"

Not only have road races all grown up on their own, without any assistance or supervision from a larger governing body, "They've all grown up in a slightly different way," Estes says. "At this point, for anybody to come in and say, 'You're all doing it wrong' -- I wouldn't want to be that person. Because, they are obviously all doing it right, on some level, and it works for them."

USATF already directs a series, the USA Road Running Circuit, with 13 events of varying distances between January's Houston Half Marathon and November's New York City Marathon this year. Each is designated a national road championship for the distance, with bonus money for winning the championship, and points accumulated over the year toward a small "grand prix" bonus. The cast of competitors, however, depends on who the individual races are able to attract; there's no feeling of following a series of competitions, nor do the individual titles -- 2010 national 7-mile champion, for example -- hold much weight, as often they do not go to the fastest athlete at the distance that year.

Moreover, the amounts of the prize purses are so small relative to other races, not to mention other sports, that it's hard to take them seriously (first-place prize in the $8,000 range, $12,500 bonus for winning the series).

BUILDING RUNNING'S MINORS

That said, for a certain class of runners, a purse of $8,000 is significant. Estes recalls Brett Gotcer, now a 2:10 marathoner, joking that his winning the 20K championships in New Haven in September 2009 doubled his income for the year. For this group of athletes -- elite, but below the top tier signing six-figure contracts with Nike -- "the U.S. championships are very attractive, " says Lilot. "They present very accessible prize money."

Lilot suggests that this might be the group who could make a series work. "There's tons of room for the second level of runners -- people who realistically are not going to make a U. S. team on the track, especially now when it is so competitive." Mary Wittenberg, the president of the New York Road Runners, and the most bullish race director on the possibility of actually putting these ideas into practice, agrees. "Last thing we want to do is take young athletes off the track," Wittenberg says. "At the same time, the need for this, a road series like this at the right stage in an athlete's career, when they can actually make some money, is key." All agree that the money a non-Olympic caliber athlete can make on the track is practically nonexistent. "If they can go have another career, it's really hard to choose running," Wittenberg says. "If you're that good, we better find a way to make it worth your while."

So what if, rather than trying to get Kenenisa Bekele, Chris Solinsky, Meseret Defar and Shalane Flanagan to abandon track and run the streets of Peoria in order to have a "true" world championships series, we let road racing be its own distinct venue for the sub-elites? Road racing can serve as a minor league -- a stepping stone where you can make money while you hone your skills for some, the ultimate destination for others. Not the top of the world, but still something to aspire to.

Let's make it a team sport, where you have to qualify and be selected to run on one of the teams in the series, and, by doing so, you're guaranteed a level of income and commit to running most if not all of the races. Athletes could be given a salary for running on the team for the tour, with prize money for each race and for winning the series as a bonus, and would be expected to actively participate in promotional activities with media and communities along the tour. We might tie it to the current development teams: Hansons, ZAP, McMillan, Mammoth, Minnesota, Bay Area Track Club. It could be limited to U.S. athletes, or could incorporate foreign athletes who are willing to be U.S.-based and run on the team during the season (can you say Yao Ming?). If your season goal is to make the world champs team and you have to peak on the date of the track champs, and therefore can't commit to the races during, before and after that, then more power to you: You aren't a candidate for this league.

We could have a series that runs from Memorial Day (Boulder) to Labor Day (New Haven) with seven or eight stops in between, from New York to Peoria, on to Atlanta, Utica, Davenport, Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth and Flint. (Note that nearly all are secondary media markets, appropriate for building a robust minor league following). Devise a simple point system that makes sense, where every runner's position counts and teams have the possibility of coming back from a deficit but can face elimination as the season builds to a dramatic conclusion.

It's not a new idea, and numerous hurdles would still have to be overcome, but many people are willing to work on it if someone will initiate the discussion. According to agents and race directors, never has there been such a large pool of athletes who could fill the ranks, both from the U.S. and abroad. Wittenberg believes, "It's right there to be had. We can have Toni to do commentating, sign up Universal Sports, get a core of athletes -- we could really have something."

Road racing will continue to survive, and thrive, as it is without such cooperation. But each race will continue to be, as Reavis says, "a stand-alone county fair." Reavis has taken to arguing that we have an obligation to promote running to mainstream America to fight the obesity crisis, as only sporting heroes can inspire youth to participate. I would agree that youth aren't motivated by maintaining health or a promise of a "lifetime" sport: They want to be stars. A road race series that provides a narrative accessible to those who don't understand or care how much harder a 30:00 10K is than a 33:00 10K, that provides a broader professional class of athletes beneath the three who can make the Olympic team in each event, and that has media continually following the races and the stars seems a great way to inspire more to make running their sport.

As for those of us already lifetime runners, we too will survive without a league of our own. But I would love next year to be checking my Blackberry "Road Racing" app -- as I now do with MLB -- on the results and standings of the Boulder Blast as they chase the series title. And I'd love to hear Toni Reavis living his dream on TV one Sunday summer morning.